Pieter with Dienke Hondius, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Free University in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank House and Jan Erik Dubbelman, head of the Education Projects Department at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Pieter is a volunteer representative for the Florida West Coast Anne Frank Center, USA.

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A Holocaust Survival Story

Neighbors of the Anne Frank family in Amsterdam chose to flee and survived to tell their story.I have often reflected on how a moment in history or a single, individual decision can alter the course of one’s life irrevocably. When I was six years old, my parents and I lived in Amsterdam under the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. Our apartment at Merwedeplein 17 happened to be near the Frank family —Otto, Edith, Margo and Anne. As neighbors we were compatible because both the Franks and my parents were Jewish and had fled from Hitler’s Germany. The youngest daughter, Anne, whose diary later became world famous, was my babysitter and playmate. At the time, of course, none of us knew what difficulties and tragedies lay ahead.

This book is the account of my family's journey to freedom as told by my father Hans Kohnstam. I offer this chronicle of our family’s survival of the Holocaust during a time of persecution.